


Five Careers for Five Brothers

by AMarguerite



Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Age of Sail, F/M, Gen, Genderswap, Napoleonic Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 11:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16217873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: A prompt from meri47-- what careers would each Bennet sibling have, if there were five Bennet brothers instead of sisters?





	1. Ensign William "Willy" Bennet, Royal Marines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meri47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meri47/gifts).



The  _ Laconia  _ was a deadly dull ship with a deadly dull captain, and this was a deadly dull voyage. They hadn’t seen any action  _ at all _ . No pirates. No Frenchmen. Not even an American ship, where they could at least have a bit of fun impressing the American seamen. 

All there were were endless drills on a parade ground that wouldn’t stay level and a lot of boring lessons because Captain Wentworth  _ apparently  _ thought all the young gentlemen on his ship also wanted to sit for a fellowship at Oxford. 

“This isn’t jolly at all,” Willy confided to his new, particular friend, Dick Musgrove. Dick was a midshipman and had it worse than Willy, for Captain Wentworth had direct control over their schoolroom, and Willy’s lieutenant was only drilling them on the geography and things because the captain was making him. Lieutenant Wickham clearly would have preferred to be playing cards. But he and Captain Wentworth were not the best of friends, and Captain Wentworth  _ was  _ the captain, so Lieutenant Wickham had to obey him to be on his good side.

“Captain Wentworth is a fine, dashing fellow whenever we see any action,” objected Dick. “I think it is only having nothing to do that makes him into a schoolmaster.”

This was a thoroughly stupid idea and Willy said as much. “What truly dashing fellow ever becomes a  _ schoolmaster  _ when there are no Frenchman to fight? Lieutenant Wickham isn’t like that at all, and he has killed more Frenchmen than he can count.” 

“I bet he hasn’t killed as many as Captain Wentworth,” protested Dick. “Captain Wentworth started off on  _ HM Sophie  _ and saw action under  _ Lucky Jack Aubrey _ . Lieutenant Wickham started off in the militia. They never saw any action.” 

Willy didn’t know who Lucky Jack Aubrey was and did not care. But he did care about his lieutenant’s character being maligned and brought Dick over to where Lieutenant Wickham liked to play his usual round of cards with one of the naval lieutenants, and two of the older ranking midshipmen. Lieutenant Wickham courteously paused his game and though he laughed at their argument over whether he or Captain Wentworth had killed more Frenchmen, it wasn’t unkind.

“What fine mettle these lads have,” he said to the naval officers, and then turned, with the same, kindly air, back to Willy and Dick. “Someday, my young bucks, you shall be as old as any of us, and entirely lose track of how many enemies you have dispatched for king and country.” 

This was disappointing, but Lieutenant Wickham asked what had caused them to begin such an argument, and agreed with Willy that to be properly dashing required deeds, not mathematical tables.

“I leave all that dull stuff to Eli and Martin at home,” confided Willy. “Martin intends to be a clergyman, and he’s never done anything dashing in his life. Eli--” and here it had to be grudgingly admitted that Eli wasn’t a bad sort. Eli had a taste for adventure, but only a  _ taste  _ for it, not a talent for it, like Willy. Willy had always been getting into all sorts of adventure as a child (though his father  _ would  _ call it mischief) and Eli would be off on long rambles, bringing back all sorts of plants instead of good stories of dust-ups with the Lucas boys. And it  _ was  _ interesting, or at least more interesting than anything  _ Martin  _ had ever done, that Eli had been to the South Seas and  _ not  _ been eaten by the natives, like Captain Cook.

“I don’t think Cook was eaten by the natives,” pointed out one of the midshipmen. 

But the lieutenant saw Willy and Dick’s argument as an interesting testing ground for deciding whether or not the Marines or the Royal Navy was the more dashing branch of service and said as much. 

“Why don’t we have them face off?” suggested Wickham. “I’ll give you handsome odds.”

“I thought your army blokes weren’t to duel,” said the midshipman who had been disagreeable about Captain Cook. “Wellington don’t like it.”

“General Wellington is in Spain,” said Wickham. “How is he going to discover what happens in Gibraltar that quickly? He’s not going to court-martial young Willy here. Especially if we don’t say anything to anyone else.”

“But Captain Wentworth has forbid duels too,” objected the same midshipman. 

“And who here is going to tell Captain Wentworth they were dueling?” asked Lieutenant Wickham, crossing his arms and looking around at the naval officers. “No man here would be blackguard enough to to that would they? No. We’ll have the two of them duel in the officers’ mess.”

Willy liked the idea, but Dick didn’t, for Dick was worse at fencing than he was at maths, and he was  _ terrible  _ at maths. The three naval officers went to work on him.

Lieutenant Wickham turned to Willy. “Now, don’t let me down. I have bet on  _ you _ .”

Willy would rather have become a parson like _Martin_  than disappoint Lieutenant Wickham. 

“Well, I suppose I challenge you,” said Willy, turning to Dick. “You maligned the marines.”

“Well, I accept,” said Dicky. “The Navy is the superior branch of service. We shall fight. Though not at dawn, we’ll get caught if we do.”

“Let’s duel now.”

“Let’s,” agreed Dick.

Willy felt full up with pride. What could possibly go wrong with a plan that  _Lieutenant Wickham_ had come up with?


	2. Lieutenant Christopher “Kit” Bennet, —th Foot

Kit hadn’t any idea what he wanted to do with his life, and thought it rather unfair that he was being asking to choose at sixteen. Why couldn’t their family be rich, or something, so that he could inherit an estate like Jamie was?

“La, why should you want to go about running Longborn?” Willy asked scornfully. “It’s so  _ dull _ . You can’t be properly dashing as a gentleman with an estate like Longborn and no house in town. Look at Jamie. He spends his days visiting the tenants and talking with the steward. We’re  _ poor _ . Even if you and Jamie swapped spots, you couldn’t cut a dash on Bond Street.”

“Well, I don’t want to go to Oxford, either,” said Kit. “It’s alright for people like Eli and Martin, but I’m no blue stocking.”

“ _ Don’t _ go into the law, like Uncle Phillips,” advised Willy. “He’s duller than any other man we know.”

Kit stuck his tongue out at Willy. “Idiot! I’d have to go to university or the inns of court or something to be a  _ lawyer _ .” He flopped into a much abused chaise in the living room. “Uncle Gardiner said I could be a clerk at his warehouse, but that would be doing maths  _ all day _ .”

“You know what I’m going to do?” Willy asked.

“What?”

“‘I’m going to have Papa buy me a commission for my sixteenth birthday,” said Willy. “In the  _ Horse Guards _ .”

“If Jamie’s too poor to cut a dash on Bond Street, you certainly aren’t getting a commission in the Horse Guards,” said Kit. 

“Well fine! Any regiment will do. It’s impossible not to be dashing in regimentals.”

Kit laced his fingers behind his head and considered it. He always  _ had  _ looked good in red. 


	3. The Reverend Martin Bennet

Lady Catherine de Bourgh, it was said, was looking for a clergyman for her _very_ valuable living at Huntsford. Martin considered this news rationally and calmly and decided that really, there wasn’t any better candidate for the role than himself.

After all—was there any more learned student of divinity than he? Some well-to-do young spring of the aristocracy had hired Eli to come down and give lectures on botany and his travels to the South Seas, so Martin went and posed the question to him.

Eli buried his face in his port glass, no doubt struggling to contemplate this question with all due seriousness. Though Martin would never say so _aloud_ , especially not about a member of his own family, he often thought Eli was not really a serious, or even proper sort of scholar. Eli’s travelogue, popular as it was, was much too spirited to be considered a _true_ contribution to science. He had attempted to be dispassionate, as Mungo Park had been before him, and, in Martin’s opinion, would have done better sticking to a drier, more factual tone. There were sections that read more like novel passages, in their humor and pretty descriptions, than a book meant to instruct. The one time Martin had tried to attend one of Eli’s lectures (he’d been on time, and had to stand out in the hall, because the room was so crowded) it was clear Eli did not know how to lecture at all. He asked questions of his audience, told jokes, and used very little Latin. Martin used as much Latin and Greek as he possibly could. How else would the world know he was accomplished? And it seemed Eli hadn’t much improved in the month he had been at Oxford. Martin often passed by the overcrowded hall where Eli held his lectures and heard _laughter_ spilling out from the room. Once, Eli had taken all his students on a nature walk, as if the fields of Oxford were as unusual and uncatalogued a place as Tahiti.

Eli emerged from his port glass. “Martin, no other current student of divinity would have written the essay you did last week. Or would use quite so much untranslated Greek in everyday conversation.”

Martin was satisfied. Eli might suffer from an overabundance of levity, but at least Oxford had had its impact. Eli was not unintelligent; he could recognize facts.

“What do you know of the lady, ah—”

“Lady Catherine de Bourgh,” said Martin, importantly.

“I have not heard of the de Bourghs.”

Martin decided to gift Eli with the most awe-inspiring piece of information, aside from the monetary value of the living: “Lady Catherine was a Fitzwilliam before she married.”

Eli at least understood the importance of _that_. “The Fitzwilliam family has some of the finest greenhouses in London. Sir Joseph Banks took me to a drawing room at the Earl of —’s once. I was amazed. They were even growing pineapples! I daresay they have even finer houses for their clergymen. Do you know who else hopes to gain the position?”

Martin here felt some fear and said, “My tutor— the one who told me of the living— also told me that William Collins has put his name forward.”

Eli refilled Martin’s glass. “I can state unequivocally that you are far superior to _William Collins_ in every respect.”

“Thank you,” said Martin, much gratified.  


	4. Mr. James “Jamie” Bennet of Longbourn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to bii-chan for the suggestion!

The first visitor they had at Netherfield Park was not Mr. Bennet, the largest local landlord, but his son and heir, James.

Darcy couldn’t hide his surprise as they shook hands. When Darcy had asked the servants of the house about the neighborhood, they had so cried up Mr. James Bennet as the best of masters and landlords, so truly a gentleman, a friend to all animals, savior of innocent maidens, slayer of dragons, etc. Darcy had assumed Mr. James Bennet to be a man... somewhat closer in temperament and affect to himself than this retiring fellow. As far as one man could judge another, Mr. James Bennet was as handsome as the local peasantry had decided— his income had not inflated his looks in the imagination of the populace — and in appearance and speech he seemed most truly the gentleman, but he was soft-spoken and smiled to fill silences.

Mr. James Bennet caught onto Darcy’s surprise but misinterpreted it. “I must also bear my father’s apologies, gentlemen. He will certainly come and call upon you, but he is— business occupies him today. We are outfitting my younger brother.”

“Has he taken a commission?” asked Bingley. “My friend here has a cousin in the Regulars.”

“The brother I am speaking of is to go on an expedition to the Pacific Northwest, on behalf of the Royal Society,” said Mr. James Bennet. “Though there are two yet younger who have commissions. My very youngest brother, William, is to become an ensign of Marines this January _,_ and the next youngest, Christopher, is a first lieutenant in the —th Infantry. He is at present in Newcastle.”

“How many brothers do you have?” asked Darcy.

“I am the eldest of five,” said Mr. James Bennet.

“Five!” exclaimed Bingley, hugely impressed. “I wish I had four brothers— or any brothers, at all! I have two sisters. I suppose your... middle brother?”

“Martin is at Oxford, at present. But yes, that is quite correct. It’s me, then Eli— the naturalist— then Martin, then Kit— Christopher, that is— and Willy. Or William.” Mr. James Bennet, or Bennet, as they soon began to call him, was happiest when he could talk of his younger brothers, all of whom he loved devotedly, though he was particularly close to Eli.

Darcy did not care for any other of the Bennets. Martin was pompous, and too fond of sprinkling his conversations with untranslated Greek epigrams that did not apply to anything under discussion. William was wild and uncontrollable and honestly ought to have been sent to sea, where he could not bother anyone, far earlier. Mr. Bennet had apparently abdicated all responsibility for his estate to James Bennet, and Mrs. Bennet was a doting and ignorant mother. She had apparently earned some measure of respect for birthing five living sons— which, admittedly, was no mean feat— but had not accomplished anything else since.

Eli was the most insufferable. He clearly thought himself very clever simply for being someone the Royal Society could spare enough to fling him halfway across the world at regular intervals, and always seemed to be covered in dirt and plant matter. How a sensible woman like Sir William Lucas’s eldest daughter could at all be fond of him, let alone fond enough to become married to him, was a mystery, and not one Darcy cared to solve.

It was infuriating then, to discover that Eli Bennet was a witty and enjoyable conversationalist, well-read, well-informed, and well-mannered. He was the only person within ten miles who could properly engage in an Oxford-style debate, and who also seemed to enjoy fishing. For all that his interactions with flora fell under Linnean cataloguing rather than useful things like crop rotation, Eli was remarkably well-versed in forestry, and even sensible Jamie Bennet seemed to listen to him when he gave his opinions on hawthorn trees.

Darcy felt annoyed. He was trying to take stock of James Bennet by riding daily through his lands, observing the state of the roads, the tenant cottages, the school houses and poor houses. Now he had to question if the coppice woods were Jamie Bennet’s idea or Eli’s. It could be both or either. It irritated Darcy more than it ought.  A gentleman’s estate was his character reference. And Bingley and Bennet were now the best of friends, and Darcy wished to be sure Bennet was worthy of such an honor. Bingley had fagged for Darcy at school, and Darcy still felt compelled to watch out and watch over him.

But then Eli left for Canada, and it was clear that Jamie Bennet— Bingley and Bennet were now Jamie and Charlie to each other— deserved the accolades laid upon him by his community. He was a careful and a kind man, and firm where he felt himself right. Darcy tried to provoke him into an argument on enclosing the common land where the villagers tethered their goats and grew their plots of vegetables, and Jamie would not argue; it was too important to him for argument. He stated, clearly and reasonably, what duties he felt he had to his tenants, and though he tried to oblige Darcy with conversation, he could not debate it. He conceded that others may feel differently, but for his circumstances, and those of his and his father’s tenants, he could not consider enclosing the land.

Darcy did not see Jamie Bennet in town that winter, though Bingley had invited him, and surprised himself by being glad to see Jamie again that fall. He was interested in what improvements Jamie had made, without the influence of Eli— and they were all things Darcy himself would have done.

“Will you come to town at all this season?” asked Bingley, as they fished by the stream running through Longbourn.

Jamie contemplated this. “I prefer to be here, I must confess. I do prefer the countryside. And it was only last year that my father gave me more responsibility over the estate. He was always willing to... discuss problems with me, but only after I had attempted to solve it on my own first. I am glad he trusted me with such responsibility, but it was a difficult course of study and it weighed heavily on me all last year, especially during the harvest.”

Mr. Bennet’s seeming neglect took on a different aspect. Darcy would never toss his son into estate management and let him sink or swim without interference, but it wasn’t an unthinkable or an unusual method of instruction.

“I did not feel it right to leave Longbourn at all, except to bid farewell to Eli. I should never wish to be the sort of absentee landlord one is always reading about, who is not alive to his duties. But I hope, when Eli is returning home the year after this, to spend some part of the season in town, for Eli is to give a lecture at the Royal Institution on his travels. I think he may give a lecture at the Royal Society as well, for he was elected a fellow before he left. I should very much like to hear him lecture. Eli was forever gathering plants and keeping them in the stillroom as a child— he had to come up with clever ways to explain them and all his experiments, as he termed them, so that mother would not have an attack of nerves. He was always able to make even moss sound interesting as a result. I think he will make an excellent lecturer. A student brought him in to lecture at Oxford during Hilary Term of ‘11 and Eli was very popular there. Martin said the lecture halls were always overflowing.” Jamie had never said so much at once before, to Bingley or to Darcy. Darcy liked that the subject to make Jamie wax eloquent was praise of his younger sibling.

“Perhaps,” said Darcy, surprising himself a little with the invitation, “you might care to stay with me, while you are in town. Sir Joseph Banks is a neighbor of mine, in Soho Square. I assume your brother will be frequently at Sir Joseph’s?” Sir Joseph Banks was the president of the Royal Society.

Jamie said, surprised and pleased, “I had planned to stay with my sister-in-law, in Richmond, but I do fear I will be... inconvenient to have about, as Eli will not have seen his wife in two years. That is very kind of you. Your sister will not mind?”

“I should like you to meet my sister,” said Darcy. He had, for many years, hoped Bingley might be a good match for Georgiana, but she had always been shy of him and his high spirits; but gentle, unassuming, _responsible_ Bennet....

“I think you would get along very well indeed.”


	5. Mr. Eli Bennet, FRS

Eli told Charlotte first, before his father or any of his brothers, that the Royal Society and Sir Joseph Banks had offered to fund a naturalist to accompany a naval expedition to the South Seas; and that he, Eli Bennet, was to be that naturalist. 

“Sir Joseph is particularly pleased to send a fellow member of Christ Church,” said Eli, eyes alight. “What a blow to Cambridge. They shall never recover.”

Charlotte congratulated him, but not without misgivings. It would be a long voyage, and to go so far, in the middle of a war— really, she would have preferred he sit for a fellowship, taken orders, and gotten a nice, safe chair at a university. Eli had been seriously considering it, before one of his tutors put his name forward as a candidate to the Royal Society. 

But Eli was still talking, in that light, almost flippant way he did about the things he most cared about: “We are to map and explore all the little islands between Tahiti and New South Wales. I dare say the cartographer will have an easier time of it. I am not entirely sure how I shall transport even half of the specimens I should like, and the living plants Sir Joseph has commissioned me to acquire.”

“You will have two years in which to work out all the details,” said Charlotte. “That is how long you will be away, will it not?”

“Yes.” Eli paused. “Miss Lucas, I... I wonder if in that time... if I might write to you.”

They had always been friends, and Eli had always asked her to dance the first at every assembly, but—

“Mr. Bennet,” said Charlotte, slowly, “do consider what you are saying. We are not related, we have no business together. I could not countenance a regular correspondence unless....”

“Unless?” Eli asked.

He turned to look at her, his hands in his trouser pockets. Eli's clothes were dusty and covered with loose bits of vegetation. Ever since they had been children, he had liked to scramble off the paths, into the wilds and wildernesses in search of some interesting bit of plant life, and come back to her bubbling over with enthusiasm over his latest discovery. 

“Unless we were engaged,” said Charlotte. 

He offered her the sweet, arch smile that had caused every girl in Meryton to profess herself in love with him, at least once. “Would that be so very dreadful a possibility, Miss Lucas? We have long been friends. I think we should suit.”

It occurred to Charlotte that this might be the only proposal she would ever receive. She had never been beautiful or wealthy and now she was no longer young. She was twenty-five. How oddly this offer both dashed her hopes of independence and yet strengthened them. Eli was eighteen, had no money of his own, and only the hope of one thousand pounds after his mother’s death. The Royal Society had promised him only this voyage, and nothing else. And yet— 

Charlotte looked sideways at Eli. He was the dearest friend she had in the world. He had little more than himself to recommend him, but even that was a greater offer than most men could make. He had his vanities and pride, he always assumed he was the cleverest person in the room, and was difficult to persuade out of his opinions, but he was courteous and compassionate and very clever. She knew how to manage the former and help cultivate the latter. If given the chance (and her help), Charlotte thought Eli might be great. 

“I know I will be gone two years or more,” said Eli, looking fixedly at the road between them. “If you met a fellow you preferred during that time, I should— I shall not hold you to an engagement. But I... It is somewhat common, in cases such as this, for the Royal Society to promise something to the dependents if the worst should happen. And I should wish it to go to you.”

“I should be honored,” Charlotte said, feeling oddly touched. “I fear you are getting a bad bargain. All I shall have to write about is Meryton and the comings and goings of the four and twenty families within it.”

“Yes but they are the families I know and you are the one describing it.” Eli added, with unexpected honesty, “I am happy to go, for I had my heart set on it; but I have never been farther from home than Oxfordshire. I miss Hertfordshire already.” 

“I shall send as much of it to you as I can.” 

Eli impulsively offered his gloved hand to her. “You will have me, Charlotte?”

“I will.” 

Eli raised her hand to his lips, both gallant and teasing. “Thank God. You are the only person who can make sense of my notes.”

The two years of Eli’s first journey passed much more quickly than anticipated, and much more pleasantly too. Though her parents had, early on, entertained hopes of a better, more advantageous match for her, now that Charlotte was twenty-five, they were relieved she was engaged at all. And Eli's letters, written weekly but received infrequently, and sometimes clumped all together, made her a person of interest within Meryton society. No one of their number had ever traveled so far, or written of it so entertainingly. It was clear Eli was tremendously happy. He enjoyed his travels, his encounters with new lands and peoples, his long walks through unfamiliar forests. There was one odd aspect to his letters, however. The farther he went from Meryton, the more underlined passages, not to be seen by any eyes but hers, his letters contained. 

She was surprised and touched by how much he missed her— wrote of their walks, her cooking, standing up in the assemblies with her— in teasing asides at first, but ones that grew long enough to fill whole pages. Charlotte did not know how to respond to these except to jot down memories of whatever thing Eli was missing most, and to wonder, privately to herself, if such a one as  _ Eli Bennet _ , quick, clever Eli, could love such a one as  _ her;  _ plain, pragmatic Charlotte. It seemed silly to ask anyone about it. Their engagement had been built on friendship and mutual respect; a mutual desire to see the other happy. Eli had only a passion for dead leaves— did he not?

And yet, when he returned to Meryton and visited Lucas Lodge— very, very brown, with hair too long, and clothes still a little stiff with sea-spray, and foreign dirt in the seams, his eyes landed first on her and he came across the park, greeting her with all the genuine pleasure of a sailor spotting familiar shore.

“Charlotte!” He held out his hands to her; she rushed to take them, hardly knowing what impulse motivated her, and then— then he pulled her to him and kissed her.

They had kissed before, in parlor games, and once or twice before he left, but one could have attributed those to a spirit of scientific experimentation. He kissed her now out of desire, and she clung to him in mixed bewilderment and wonder.

“I suppose,” said Eli, smiling down at her. “That you have not found a man you preferred.”

Obviously not. But Eli had his vanities and Charlotte indulged him. “I should be hard pressed to find such a man.”

Eli laughed. “My dear Charlotte. I wish I had the money to marry you tomorrow.”

But he didn’t, and both set to work on a will. Eli published articles on his research— Charlotte edited them and copied them out for the printers— and was invited to read one of his better received articles at the Royal Society. There he gave an astonishingly good lecture, and not only was made a Fellow, but was asked to lecture elsewhere. This lead to being hired to lecture at Oxford, where he was persuaded by his students to write a travelogue rather than merely articles on botany.

Eli had kept journals of his journeys, and these, combined with his letters to Charlotte, seemed to her a good start towards the kind of travelogue then in vogue. Eli had gone so far as to gather together all his notes and specimens when he received an offer to be a botanist on a summer trip to the Hebrides with a wealthy gentleman, a Mr. Crawford, who was dabbling at being a gentleman scientist out of boredom.

"I should like to go," said Eli. “It is not only that I should like to see the Hebrides. Mr. Crawford will pay me twice what the Royal Society did to collect their specimens. But I shan’t have time to pull together a book if I am to try and teach Mr. Crawford to be interested in dead leaves when he is merely interested in being fashionable.”

“Well then,” said Charlotte, reasonably, “leave me to edit everything into a coherent narrative. I shall send you a fair copy of the draft once it is done. Then you may make any corrections or emendations you like, which I hope will not take much work, and I shall copy out the manuscript again, with all the corrections.”

Eli agreed that this seemed the most sensible way forward, and Charlotte set to editing with a will. Eli had left her all his notes, travel journals, and specimens, and Charlotte surprised herself at how interesting she found the work, and how easily she could make order out of the chaos of Eli’s observations. When Eli returned, thoroughly exasperated with Mr. Crawford, but with material enough for another book, and an offer from the Royal Society to accompany an expedition to the Pacific Northwest, she handed him a contract from John Murray for his travelogue.

After several days of careful accounting, they realized they had enough to marry and to rent a small home of their own, on the outskirts of London. Eli had speculated that it would be better to be settled near London, where the Royal Society met, where there was a public already primed to be interested in scientific lectures by Humphrey Davies, and Charlotte encouraged him in this. She felt very keenly that a woman should not be settled too near her parents and had befriended many wives and sisters of other fellows of the Royal Society through letter. She was eager to meet all of her correspondents.

They retreated to a corner of the drawing room fire to discuss the logistics of this, ignoring Sir William Lucas’s speculations that Eli might someday be blessed with the supreme happiness of being presented at St. James’s Court, and Mrs. Bennet’s crowing about how fine and accomplished all her sons were and how James was already fast friends with the new Mr. Bingley who had moved into Netherfield Park. 

“Charlotte,” asked Eli, aruptly, as she bent to stir up the fire, “are you happy?”

It seemed odd to say that no one had ever asked her that before, but her parents were kindly, good-natured people, not prone to deep reflection. They were happy, so they assumed most of their children were happy. Sir William had, from time to time, contemplated the fact that none of his children had been presented at St. James’s Court, and therefore could not know true felicity, but there ended his ability to understand that his children might not be perfectly happy how they currently lived. 

“Yes,” said Charlotte, startled. “I am happy with the idea of London, I—"

“Not that,” said Eli. “Well  _ yes that _ , but it is only part of it—I mean with me. Charlotte, I shall, I fear, always be scampering halfway across the world for months and years at time. You will be often on your own.”

To be quite honest, the idea of such independence, of enjoying absolute rule over her home, of being able to have rooms and rooms of her own, with no younger siblings to wrangle or manage, with space and silence enough to tend to her thoughts as a gardener with their saplings, appealed to her more than any other marital arrangement she could conceive of. She struggled to think of a way to tell Eli that his long absences from home were an enticement rather than a disincentive without wounding his pride. For she did prefer __ having Eli near her, and always enjoyed Eli’s conversation, but she was content with his letters. And when she pictured the proposed house near Kew Gardens or in Richmond, she always found herself dreaming of reading Eli’s letters in a wide, white sitting room, empty but for the sunlight streaming in. 

“I think, if you continue to write to me,” said Charlotte, carefully, “and I have your journals to edit, I shall be able to bear the solitude very cheerfully.” 

Eli was looking at her oddly, tenderly. “I love you, Charlotte.”

Charlotte flushed. He had often said so before, always concluded his letters by sending his love, but this felt... odd. Almost confessional. “Do you indeed?”

“I do  _indeed._ "

“What brought that on?”

“Ah,” said Eli, scowling at a burning log. “It was something Mr. Darcy said at the Assembly the other night, when he heard we were engaged. I hardly  _ abandon  _ you, do I Charlotte?”

“No,” said Charlotte. “What an odd view he must have on men in the army or the navy if that is how he perceives your research expeditions.”

Eli smiled at her, in such a way Charlotte found herself off-kilter and babbling, “I hope you know I— I cannot think of an arrangement that would make me happier than ours. I would not take away your travels when they bring you such pleasure. I would not change you. I... I do believe that I love you. I hope you knew that.” 

“Yes,” said Eli, “but I am vain enough to always like to hear it said.”

Charlotte colored and stared at the fire. She felt flushed, and very aware of Eli’s presence beside her. Charlotte thought, for the first time of how carnally she might miss him while he was gone, and wondered at herself. She had always prided herself on her pragmaticism, on how rationally— almost scientifically— she approached the world, but now— of all the foolish things! Was she really in love with Eli?

“It hardly matters what the Mr. Darcys of the world think of the manner in which we live, does it?” asked Eli. “Perhaps our happiness does not take the same shape as most, but you would hardly find two trees of the same species that grow the exact same way.” 

“Yes,” said Charlotte. “We shall be very happy.” She hesitated then but it felt strangely, profoundly right to add on, “My love.”


End file.
